and the election was pretty darn close. >> using public funding -- >> using public funding. so if you look across the country, there's all sorts of evidence of people who spent a lot of money in campaigns, who spent more money than their opponents and lost because having more money and having a lot of money doesn't make you a better candidate. what matters is having a threshold, an amount of money that's sufficient to run a credible campaign. and that's what citizen funding allows you to do. it allows you to get that amount of money that lets you run a credible campaign, be a good candidate connecting with your voters and do it in a way that's focusing your attention on ordinary citizens. >> but how does it undo the power of big money? >> well, so mayor bloomberg's an outlier. there aren't so many candidates like that. listen, we're never going to keep private money out of politics. that's the wrong ambition. the goal is to -- >> you're not saying we should? >> we shouldn't and we can't -- >> yeah, that's right. but citizens united makes it impossible. >> they have opened th